Vatican City, Nov 9, 2023 / 04:00 am (CNA).
The Diocese of Rome has planned a full year of events to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, which was dedicated on Nov. 9, 324.
The church is the cathedral of the diocese and the seat of the bishop of Rome, the pope. Until the 14th century, the adjoining palace served as the papal residence.
While St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist are the archbasilica’s patrons, it is called St. John Lateran because it was built on property donated by the Plautii Laterani family during the Roman Empire.
The date of the basilica’s dedication, Nov. 9, in the year 324 by Pope Sylvester I is a feast day in the Church.
A Latin inscription in the church reads: “Omnium ecclesiarum Urbis et Orbis mater et caput,” which means in English: “The mother and head of all churches of the city and of the world.”
“The cathedral of Rome, Mater et Caput of all the Churches of Rome and the world, is a very special point of reference for our diocese and for the universal Church,” Rome’s vicar, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, said in a post on the Diocese of Rome website.
“In it one breathes the history of 17 centuries, of a basilica built and rebuilt three times, up to the present building of 1700. Five ecumenical councils have taken place in it,” he continued.
“In the See of the Chair of Peter,” De Donatis said, “all Christians of the world feel the bond with the bishop of Rome. In this place we Christians of Rome recognize once again the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, pointed out by [John] the Baptist. Here we feel, like [John] the beloved disciple, the beating heart of Christ, the Savior, consumed with love for all humanity. In the school of the two ‘Johns’ we find the particular vocation of our Church called to preside in charity.”
The Diocese of Rome will open the year of celebrations with a solemn pontifical Mass celebrated by De Donatis in the afternoon on Nov. 9. The Mass will include music written for the occasion by Father Marco Frisina, Italy’s most popular contemporary composer of religious hymns.
Other events planned throughout the year include concerts, Masses, and religious-cultural talks about the history of the archbasilica and the adjoining Lateran Palace.
The anniversary celebrations will close with Mass on Nov. 9, 2024.
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Saint John Lateran has significance for understanding what Catholic Christianity is about. What stands out is its mission to clearly state, without ambivalence Christ’s call for repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
The Lateran Basilica is where priests studying at pontifical institutions would be examined, as to whether they possessed the requirements for receiving priests’ faculties for hearing confession and granting absolution. After ordination. Not every priest may exercise that faculty. The exam was stringent [rigorous] and informative. Two religious order theologians ‘grilled me’ at length. A final question was, Who would you hold to greater adherence to Church teaching on moral responsibility and sin, the penitent or the priest? Thought briefly and answered, The priest. Both interrogators smiled indicating the correct response. The answer is consistent with Christ’s teaching, that more is expected from those to whom more is given.
We have an awesome responsibility in that regard, to penitent and Christ. That was then. I wonder what is now, what with Francis the First’s policy of downplaying rigor. Going so far as to insult rigorous priests. What in heaven’s name does this pontiff mean? Read Amoris Laetitia carefully and the answer is mitigation of the standards that make for sound moral judgment. Largely based on what consists of ‘manifest behavior’, not interior, conscientious disposition, or concrete circumstances. Otherwise why the crucifixion, and why the pouring out of grace for the forgiveness of sins?
We read: “Why the crucifixion?” As in the flick, “Cool Hand Luke,” surely what we have here is simply a “failure to communicate.” Recalling how, on April 18, some fifty Anglican clergy celebrated a liturgy in St. John Lateran Archbasilica. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/04/20/breaking-vatican-blames-failure-in-communication-for-anglican-service-in-popes-church-in-rome/
Lo, in recent history the final tipping point for Cardinal Newman converting from Anglicanism to the Catholic faith was a comparable (but not fully equivalent) moment within the Anglican ecclesial communion (not apostolic, and therefore not a Church).
At issue was the 1841 Anglican proposal to establish a bishop in Jerusalem, where “there was not a single Anglican,” to gather-in the Lutherans and the Calvinists (and to possibly convert the Jews of which Newman was told “there are not half-a-dozen”)–whose congregating (synodally?) would be a matter of INDIFFERENCE–with Protestant bodies “allowing [their members] to put themselves under an Anglican Bishop, without formal renunciation of their errors or regard to the due reception of baptism and confirmation [….]”
“This was the third blow [like the early Arian and Monophysite shards], which finally shattered my faith in the Anglican Church [sic]. That Church was not only forbidding any sympathy of concurrence with the Church of Rome, but it actually was courting an intercommunion with Protestant Prussia and the heresy of the Orientals” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Part V).
Today, the disintegration of faith, culture, morals (!), and even civilization calls for bridges of all kinds. Even the best Vatican leadership and theologians of our entire two millennia would find this a most challenging high wire act…but don’t fidelity and coherent clarity still require swimming the Tiber?